Aimée Dorr to End Service as Dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

Aimée Dorr, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, has informed me that she will end her service as dean effective June 30, 2012.

Aimée has served UCLA with great distinction and dedication. A professor in the UCLA department of education since 1981, Aimée was appointed as dean in September 1999, assuming leadership responsibility for the departments of education and information studies and UCLA Lab School. As the newly appointed dean, Aimée led the school in creating a vision and mission that emphasize making a difference in the education and information fields through both scholarship and professional practice. In 2000, GSE&IS adopted a new mission statement that has since guided its work: “GSE&IS is dedicated to inquiry, the advancement of knowledge, the improvement of professional practice, and service to the education and information professions. We develop future generations of scholars, teachers, information professionals, and institutional leaders. Our work is guided by the principles of individual responsibility and social justice, an ethic of caring, and commitment to the communities we serve.”

The school is nationally known and respected for this work, and both of GSE&IS’s departments are highly ranked among their peer institutions.

During her tenure, Dean Dorr has worked tirelessly to establish GSE&IS as pre-eminent in the areas of equity, access and multiculturalism in K-12 and higher education, and in library, archival and information services. Since 1999, Aimée has led the school in significantly enhancing the diversity of its faculty, students and staff; increasing graduate enrollment in state-supported programs by one-third and ladder faculty FTEs by approximately 20 percent; increasing financial support for students in GSE&IS’s Ph.D. and professional programs; and bringing to fruition the largest GSE&IS gift from a living donor. GSE&IS has also taken the lead at UCLA in creating and supporting the UCLA Community School, an LAUSD K-12 pilot school that serves a primarily low-income, immigrant community in the Pico-Union/Koreatown area and simultaneously addresses the University of California’s commitments to teaching, research and service.

Among Dean Dorr’s other accomplishments is her resourceful stewardship as co-chair with the vice chancellor for student affairs for UCLA’s Academic Preparation and Educational Partnership programs. Also, she was co-founder of the L.A. Basin Education Deans group and a member of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Education Advisory Group. She currently serves as chair of the Institutions of Higher Education Collaborative of the Los Angeles Compact. Dean Dorr has also led the effort to establish and grow TIE-INS, a UCLA-wide program that brings increased UCLA engagement to a family of nearby K-12 schools that, in exchange, enroll children of our academic and staff employees. Aimée has held leadership positions within the UC system, including chair and vice chair of the UC Academic Senate and faculty representative to the UC Board of Regents.

Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Dorr was a faculty member at Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Southern California, where she served as associate dean of the Annenberg School of Communications. She has also held a visiting professor appointment at Beijing Normal University. She is a fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Her research has been in the area of electronic media and the processes by which young people make sense of, utilize and are affected by electronic media. Her areas of expertise also include policy analysis and the role of research in policy decision making. She has served on several panels looking at a national policy for children’s television and for advertising to children, including for the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Aimée received her B.S. in mathematics from Stanford University, where she also earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology.

As we continue our work with Dean Dorr throughout the upcoming academic year, we anticipate ample time and opportunities to thank her for her leadership and commitment to UCLA. We are deeply grateful for her dedicated service as dean, and we look forward to her continued contributions to UCLA as a lifelong member of the university family.

In the coming months, I will form a search committee to identify candidates for Aimée’s successor and will keep you informed as we initiate the search.